Finnish wood pulp giant Stora Enso to leave viscose market after Xinjiang link disclosed

Finnish pulp and paper giant Stora Enso has announced that it will 'divest' from making the raw ingredient needed to produce wood-based viscose rayon fibre, amid reports of links between the company and forced labour in Xinjiang.

Recently, South China Morning Post reported that Xinjiang has emerged as a major player in the global viscose industry - and that Finland is by far Xinjiang's biggest foreign supplier of dissolved chemical wood pulp, the raw material needed to make the textile fibre.

In a statement published on Stora Enso's website on Monday, chief financial officer Sepp Parvi said the company was "moving away from the global soluble pulp segment for viscose production".

"This segment is not the core of our operations and represents only a very small part of our entire business. Soluble pulp is produced at the company's Uimaharju pulp mill, which produces both soluble pulp and ordinary pulp," Parvi said.

On Monday, a United Nations working group said that scores of Chinese and foreign compes may be involved in human trafficking, forced labour and other human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region,

"Several experts appointed by the Human Rights Council said they had received information that connected over 150 domestic Chinese and foreign domiciled compes to serious allegations of human rights abuses against Uyghur workers," South China Morning Post quoting the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said.

No specific compes were named, but the working group mentioned the sectors of agribusiness, tech, automotive, and textile and garment.

"Uyghur workers have reportedly been subjected to exploitative working and abusive living conditions that may constitute arbitrary detention, human trafficking, forced labour and enslavement by the use of forced labour," according to the statement about findings gathered by the OHCHR's Working Group on Business and Human Rights.

Several countries have asked China to address reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.

Recently, several compes such as H&M and Nike (NKE) said they were concerned about allegations that forced labour has been used to produce cotton in Xinjiang.

On Friday, the Biden administration said America is keen to ensure that US compes adhere to US law and worker concerns and "don't in any way support forced labour"

China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.

Beijing, on the other hand, has vehemently denied that it is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang while reports from journalists, NGOs and former detainees have surfaced, highlighting the Chinese Communist Party's brutal crackdown on the ethnic community, according to a report.

( With inputs from ANI )